Maine

The Portland Rum Riot erupted on June 2, 1855, when the city’s Irish working-class residents found out their teetotaling, saloon-raiding mayor was storing $1,600 worth of liquor at City Hall. At 5 p.m. that day, about 200 people gathered outside ...

Freelan O. Stanley and his wife Flora drove a Stanley Steamer to the top of Mt. Washington on Aug. 31, 1899, one of the earliest publicity stunts in the automotive industry. It was also the first time any automobile had ...

For Massachusetts Lt. Gov. William Dummer, making peace with the Indians in 1727 required diplomacy, capable militia officers and letter-writing, letter-writing, letter-writing. On May 27, 1727, the war was winding down between the English colonists and the Indians, aided by the French, in what ...

Rachel Carson knew little about Maine when she saved up a month of vacation from her government job and rented a tiny cottage just west of Boothbay Harbor. There was a fishery there and she planned to study lobster culture. ...

More than 300 men were drafted from tiny Ashland, Maine, in Aroostook County, to fight in World War II by Memorial Day 1943. The town, a farming community, had fewer than 1,000 residents, so the Memorial Day ceremonies featured few young ...

Maine was at the center of one of the biggest boxing scandals of all time. In a sport known for its chaos and corruption, not much has ever topped the heavyweight champsionship fight between Charles “Sonny” Liston and Muhammad Ali ...

In 1847, a Maine ship captain invented the donut as we know it today – with a hole. On the day the photo below was taken, Capt. Hansen Gregory was living in the next town and telling his cronies how he'd gotten ...

For many years during the 19th century, the simple, self-sufficient Shakers of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, mingled happily with the luxury-loving guests and the owners of the Poland Spring Hotel. It must have been the water. Both the Shakers and the ...

Charles Ingraham went off to sea as a privateer and it almost ruined him. It didn't kill him, though. Something else did. Charles was the son of Joseph and Bradbury Ingraham, pioneers who settled on 210 acres bordering Rockland Harbor ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a 22-year-old Vassar student on May 4, 1918 when she wrote a letter thanking her friend Corinne Sawyer for a basket of flowers. She was already famous for a poem she wrote when she was ...